it with the great door from which your answer has come. Your
teeth are a bungling piece of workmanship. They appear with pain,
decay with time, and so long as they last torture those who do not
industriously attend to them. But art will correct nature. See this
box--" and he now began to praise the tooth-powder and cure for
toothache he had invented. Next he passed to the head, and described in
vivid colors, its various pains. But they too were to be cured, people
need only buy his arcanum. It was to be had for a trifle, and whoever
bought it could sweep away every headache, even the worst, as with a
broom.
Adrian listened to the famous doctor with mouth wide open. Specially
sweet odors floated over to him from the hot surface of the stove before
the booth, and he would have gladly allowed himself a plate of fresh
cakes. The baker's stout wife even beckoned to him with a spoon, but he
closed his hand around the purse and again turned his eyes towards the
quack, whose cart was now surrounded by men and women buying tinctures
and medicines.
Henrica lay ill in his father's house. He had been taken into her room
twice, and the beautiful pale face, with its large dark eyes, had filled
his heart with pity. The clear, deep voice in which she addressed a few
words to him, also seemed wonderful and penetrated the inmost depths
of his soul: He was told one morning that she was there, and since that
time his mother rarely appeared and the house was far more quiet than
usual; for everybody walked lightly, spoke in subdued tones, rapped
cautiously at a window instead of using the knocker, and whenever Bessie
or he laughed aloud or ran up or down-stairs, Barbara, his mother, or
Trautchen appeared and whispered: "Gently, children, the young lady has
a headache."
There were many bottles in the cart which were warranted to cure the
ailment, and the famous Morpurgo seemed to be a very sensible man,
no buffoon like the other mountebanks. The wife of the baker, Wilhelm
Peterssohn, who stood beside him, a woman he knew well, said to her
companion that the doctor's remedies were good, they had quickly cured
her godmother of a bad attack of erysipelas.
The words matured the boy's resolution. Fleeting visions of the sword,
the cross-bow, the gingerbread and the nice little brothers once more
rose before his mind, but with a powerful effort of the will he thrust
them aside, held his breath that he might not smell the alluring odor of
t
|